REALPATH(3) Linux Programmer's Manual REALPATH(3)NAMErealpath - return the canonicalized absolute pathname
SYNOPSIS
#include <limits.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
char *realpath(const char *path, char *resolved_path);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
realpath(): _BSD_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE >= 500
DESCRIPTIONrealpath() expands all symbolic links and resolves references to /./,
/../ and extra '/' characters in the null-terminated string named by
path to produce a canonicalized absolute pathname. The resulting path‐
name is stored as a null-terminated string, up to a maximum of PATH_MAX
butes, in the buffer pointed to by resolved_path. The resulting path
will have no symbolic link, /./ or /../ components.
If resolved_path is specified as NULL, then realpath() uses malloc(3)
to allocate a buffer of up to PATH_MAX bytes to hold the resolved path‐
name, and returns a pointer to this buffer. The caller should deallo‐
cate this buffer using free(3).
RETURN VALUE
If there is no error, realpath() returns a pointer to the
resolved_path.
Otherwise it returns a NULL pointer, and the contents of the array
resolved_path are undefined. The global variable errno is set to indi‐
cate the error.
ERRORS
EACCES Read or search permission was denied for a component of the path
prefix.
EINVAL Either path or resolved_path is NULL. (In libc5 this would just
cause a segfault.) But, see NOTES below.
EIO An I/O error occurred while reading from the file system.
ELOOP Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating the
pathname.
ENAMETOOLONG
A component of a pathname exceeded NAME_MAX characters, or an
entire pathname exceeded PATH_MAX characters.
ENOENT The named file does not exist.
ENOTDIR
A component of the path prefix is not a directory.
VERSIONS
On Linux this function appeared in libc 4.5.21.
CONFORMING TO
4.4BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
POSIX.1 says that the behavior if resolved_path is NULL is implementa‐
tion-defined. POSIX.1-2008 specifies the behavior described in this
page. In 4.4BSD and Solaris the limit on the pathname length is MAX‐
PATHLEN (found in <sys/param.h>). SUSv2 prescribes PATH_MAX and
NAME_MAX, as found in <limits.h> or provided by the pathconf(3) func‐
tion. A typical source fragment would be
#ifdef PATH_MAX
path_max = PATH_MAX;
#else
path_max = pathconf(path, _PC_PATH_MAX);
if (path_max <= 0)
path_max = 4096;
#endif
(But see the BUGS section.)
The 4.4BSD, Linux and SUSv2 versions always return an absolute path‐
name. Solaris may return a relative pathname when the path argument is
relative. The prototype of realpath() is given in <unistd.h> in libc4
and libc5, but in <stdlib.h> everywhere else.
BUGS
Avoid using this function. It is broken by design since (unless using
the non-standard resolved_path == NULL feature) it is impossible to
determine a suitable size for the output buffer, resolved_path.
According to POSIX a buffer of size PATH_MAX suffices, but PATH_MAX
need not be a defined constant, and may have to be obtained using path‐
conf(3). And asking pathconf(3) does not really help, since on the one
hand POSIX warns that the result of pathconf(3) may be huge and unsuit‐
able for mallocing memory. And on the other hand pathconf(3) may
return -1 to signify that PATH_MAX is not bounded.
The libc4 and libc5 implementation contains a buffer overflow (fixed in
libc-5.4.13). Thus, set-user-ID programs like mount(8) need a private
version.
SEE ALSOreadlink(2), canonicalize_file_name(3), getcwd(3), pathconf(3),
sysconf(3)COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.15 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
2008-09-26 REALPATH(3)
